Ah, plans… They say luck favors the prepared. Axosoft Version 15.3 adds to those prepping efforts. The Release Planner introduces a new way to approach resource allocation for your sprints and releases. Here’s my voice describing the planner with visual detail:

Release Planner

To start this tour, click the Release Planner tab; the planner will appear on the right and your items will be in the workspace on the left.

Workspace on the left. Release Planner on the right.

The workspace will be filtered by your Organize Panel selection along with any additional filters, grouping, or sorting you have enabled. Use this customization to get a view of all the items up for consideration.

Over on the planner side, select the release from the dropdown menu or create a new release. This section of the Release Planner allows you to:

Adjust the start date and due date

Edit your release details

Add teams or users participating in this release

Expand or collapse the users and teams

Change the release, adjust the dates, and add team members

What does the planner show me?

Your release selection will display all the items currently assigned to each of your teams and team members, as well as any unassigned items in the release/sprint. Each team member will have their own section with:

Number of items assigned to them

Amount of time already assigned

Any available capacity

Each user will display the number of items assigned to them already

Any items not assigned to anyone will be located under the [Unassigned ] section and you can remove users by clicking the X symbol to remove that team or user. Removing users will leave their items in the release under [Unassigned]. You can also drag items from the left and drop them in above the user/teams to add them to the release. Any items that are already assigned will add that user to the release. You can also reassign items to a different user from within the planner.

Drag and drop items to allocate work. Watch the capacities update

How do I set user capacity?

Editing a team member’s settings will allow you to set that user’s work days, daily capacity, and vacation days. Any user of the system can update this themselves by navigating to their username in the upper right and then selecting User Options > Capacity.

User capacities roll up to the release capacity you see in the upper right. This visually shows you:

Total hours assigned to individual users

Total hours assigned to teams

Hours left unassigned

Remaining available capacity

Review your capacity at the user level and the release level.

With this knowledge, drag and drop the items from the workspace on the left to the appropriate user or team on the right and watch your release capacity update. If you exceed your capacity, you should get a red warning so that you can adjust accordingly.

Keep in mind, the capacity you define in the release settings will supersede the user capacities that roll up from all your individual users and teams. You are welcome to use just the user capacities or both!

One More Update

One last thing, the Daily Scrum has been renamed to “Standup.” Easy enough, right?